The right thing finally happened long after it should have when Rob Reiner finally resigned his position to his expired term as head of California’s First 5 Commission.  It is telling that he was NOT just replaced outright by Gov. Arnold "I hope I’ll be back" Schwarzenager, who had every right to do so since Reiner’s term of office is long expired.  Here’s the summary of what went down from Bill Bradley (emphasis added):

Reiner had put his friend Schwarzenegger on the spot, testing their Hollywood friendship by his refusal to finally step away from the commission, where his term had actually expired in 2004. His half-measure of taking a leave of absence had clearly and predictably failed. So over the past weekend, he spoke with the governor and made clear his intention to resign. The former action superstar agreed to replace Reiner with a Reiner associate, Hector Ramirez, chief operating officer of the highly respected Los Angeles family service organization, Para Los Ninos.

The Proposition 82 campaign was launched at an event outside Para Los Ninos. Ramirez served on the executive committee of the First 5 LA’s Preschool For All Initiative, which was, as I reported earlier, Reiner and First 5’s initial attempt to institute a publicly-funded universal preschool program and served as a model for Prop 82. After it was discovered that the Prop 10 tobacco tax money was inadequate for the task, Reiner’s thoughts turned to a new statewide initiative to fund Preschool For All at the state level. That initiative is now Prop 82.

With those ties, the appointment may prove problematic politically for Schwarzenegger. But Reiner, an enormous public lightning rod, had removed himself from the commission.

His resignation, of course, ends nothing other than the drama over his tenure with the agency he created through his Proposition 10 cigarette tax initiative of 1998. In fact, I’ve learned that the investigation may even broaden somewhat over the already expansive probe described by State Auditor Elaine Howle.

If this account is accurate then Arnold doesn’t seem to think that this issue can hurt him in any way.  All the maneuvering here is being done by Reiner in the interests of furthering his Prop 82 Initiative’s chances.  By appointing Reiner’s chosen successor Arnold has essentially endorsed the effort to pass Prop 82 and shown he has no problems with how First 5 was run.  Arnold has firmly tied himself into the whole scandal, something he could have escaped if he had taken independent action to replace Reiner with a respected neutral third party with no interest in passing Prop 82 or with any ties to the tainted Reiner.

Gov. Schwarzenager and his team may be right that other issues will overshadow the pall emanating from this whole mess.  I think they made a mistake.  I have to think the Governor’s clear acceptance of the appearance of corruption and the abuse of public funds — potentially proceeding to prosecutions or other sanctions before the election due to the ongoing investigations — will harm his chances for re-election.  The subject isn’t going away any time soon and with this appointment of a key ally of the hotly investigated Reiner the Governor just firmly bought into his own chunk of it.  I know it will be in my mind as election day approaches.